The Bracelet (Draco Malfoy Fanfiction)

Prologue

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

- George Eliot

***

I remember a lot of things from that day, the first of them being a strong feeling of excitement as my smiling mother handed me a small velvet box.

I was wearing a blue dress with a sash fastened around the waistband, and ink-black Mary Janes fresh out of the box. In my hair, I wore a purple butterfly clip, encrusted with shiny rhinestones that reflected the light from the sun. My mother often dressed me up as a child.

It was my fifth birthday, and I couldn't have been happier.

I'd received the butterfly clip as a gift from my Aunt Dianne only minutes earlier. This was to nobody's surprise, as I'd begged and pleaded for it for weeks as soon as my childish eyes had spotted it at a local farmer's market.

Wrapping paper was strewn across the floor, and the small family that had gathered in celebration of my birthday that day watched anxiously as I held the gift from just my mother in my small hands.

I could tell that whatever awaited me inside of that box was something special, something she wanted me to cherish forever, and something different from anything else I'd received that day; or perhaps any day in the past.

Cautiously, I began to pull back at the lid, until it popped open. Inside was the most beautiful and delicate piece of jewelry I'd ever laid eyes on.

A charm bracelet.

It was glinting silver, and the metal itself was ingrained with almost microscopic groves. A single charm adorned the bracelet; a miniature red panda, crafted out of fine glass. After a trip to the zoo a month before my birthday, I'd decided that this was my favorite animal.

As I lifted the bracelet to my eyes, completely awestruck (this caused a few of my relatives to chuckle in adoration) a small jingle echoed in my ears.

Although I didn't know it at the time, I'd never forget this sound.

When I looked to my mother again, she was wearing a soft and close-lipped smile.

Lovingly, she wrapped her arms around my small frame, placing her head on my shoulder.

"From me to you, Jenny." She whispered gently, the sound of her voice making me grin. "Always know that I love you, sweetpea. You're in my heart wherever I go."

After our arms slipped away from each other, another smile stretched across my lips. Even at this age, I knew that this sort of gift could have only been inspired by a mother's love.

I stared down at the stunning bracelet, mesmerized. It was so pretty to me, and I remember feeling so proud to have it, and promised myself I'd wear it every day for the rest of my life (a promise that I've stayed true to, even to this day).

As picture perfect as this moment seemed, it was everything but that.

In reality, hidden behind the beauty of it all, a much more wicked and sinister truth lurked. It would be another decade before I discovered this.

As for the bracelet, which seemed much more innocent and sentimental than it truly was, it never parted with my wrist, even from the moment I first put it on.

And in that moment, I never would've imagined that something so small and simple could go on to cause such horrid damage.

It took me 11 years to realize it, but I was 11 years too late.

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